Murray Practice

Spent the past two weekends practicing for the first PBC Trail tournament at Murray. Spent yesterday almost exclusively idling and looking for spots off the bank - I didn't fish any of the stuff I normally would. This is what I looked like for about 6 hours yesterday....

I did manage to catch one fish off the two places I found that I like but it was the wrong species and an ugly one at that...

Looking forward to the tournament. I expect conditions to change a good bit between now and the tournament on February 1st. Water temps will cool and unless we get a good bit of rain I expect the water mid-lake and up to clear somewhat. Still two weeks to prepare...for now I am going to fish Lake James tomorrow and see if I can get on some smallmouth. Sure hope to have some good video to share tomorrow afternoon.

Next Saturday Andy Greene and I are back at Hartwell for the CATT Championship. Putting all our eggs in one basket...hero or zero.

Christmas Break Report

My family and I enjoyed a great Christmas together and, being off for two weeks, I was able to fish 9 days out of the 14. It has been a long time since I have fished 4 days consecutively but I had a blast.
Andy Greene and I fished three tournaments during the break. We fished the CATT trail at Hartwell one Saturday and finished third. We caught our fish on jigs, creature baits, crankbaits, and Arigs on main channel structure. We have struggled to catch the quality we need but feel if the water temp will fall a little more that our weights will go up.
My son and I fished Murray for stripers one day. We only managed 2 keepers and we caught 10 I think but I want to share something that happened. We, along with about 5 other boats, found stripers in one area. One of the other boats was really catching them and the rest of us were catching one every little while. I kept looking at what they were doing and exactly what they were using and realized they were using a single swim bait. I sat down and started going through my tackle and the guy in the back of the boat catching them asked me if we had any swim baits. I told him I had some 3.5s and then he asked about the size jig heads I had. I told him 1/8th was the biggest so he idled over and gave us a bag of swimsuits and heads like they were using. And, it made a difference in the bites we were getting. I appreciate those guys taking time to help us out. I do not know their names but they were from Kings Mtn., NC.
The rest of the time I spent at Lake James. I have known James as the Dead Sea for as long as I can remember but I have more confidence to catch a big bag there than anywhere else right now. I spent several days just looking for new places and only found one. We fished two tournaments and finished second in one with 16+ and third in the other with about 12. Those smallmouth are a ball to catch and there are always a few largemouth sprinkled in.
It is time now to focus on Lake Murray in preparation for the first PBC tournament of the season. I think it is critical we get off to a good start in the points. The top 100 have the chance to fish for 50K this October at Hartwell.